In wireless networks, such as cellular networks, Mobile Nodes such as cellular telephones must establish security associations with different network entities. Establishing a Security Association between a Mobile Node and a network entity means deciding a set of parameters describing the Security Association. In particular, it may mean deciding what security algorithms, such as encryption, integrity protection, authentication and key derivation algorithms, are to be used for communications over the wireless interface. It may also mean deciding how these algorithms are to be used and in what cases, what keys are to be used with the algorithms, how additional keys to be used in the Security Association are to be derived, the lifetime of the Security Association and of the keys established in the Security Association.
For example, in future cellular networks, the Mobile Node will have to dynamically establish security associations with various different network entities.
The following describes a list of security associations that a Mobile Node may need to establish with an entity; but this list is provided to illustrate the current application. This latter is not restricted to the following scenarios.
The Mobile Node and the serving system must agree on the aspects of a Security Association mentioned above for communications over the wireless interface with a network entity.
If the network is a mobile IPv4 (Internet Protocol) based cellular network, the Mobile Node and the Foreign Agent may have to establish a Security Association.
If the network is a mobile IP (Internet Protocol) based cellular network, and the Home Agent is dynamically assigned, then the Mobile Node and the assigned Home Agent must set up a Security Association. Furthermore, if the network is a mobile IP based cellular network, then the Mobile Node and the Corresponding Node may also have to set up such a Security Association in order to use Route Optimizations.
If a Localized Mobility Management scheme such as MIPv6RR (Mobile lpv6 Regional Registration) or HMIPv6 (Hierarchical Mobile lpv6) is used, the Mobile Node and the Agents in the visited domain must share a Security Association. Thus, as noted above, there are many cases in which the Mobile Node needs to set up a Security Association with one or more Network Entities in the visited domain. In order to setup such a Security Association, the Mobile Node needs to indicate to the Network Entities the list of parameters describing the Security Association mentioned above that it supports.
The messages sent by the Mobile Node containing the above noted information can be long since the Mobile Node must define the capabilities it supports and must send some specific proposals to the Network Entities. The Mobile Node and the Network Entities may sometimes exchange many messages before agreeing on specific parameters of the Security Association as described above. Accordingly, the negotiations needed to set up the Security Associations are extensive and therefore not efficient for cellular networks or other wireless networks where the radio resources are limited and expensive.